204 
THE PITCH LAKE. 
[Nature and Art, December 1, 1866. 
after mentioning the decayed condition of the spe- 
cimen, wrote : — 
“ The drawings of the great Tree-Aloe are also most 
interesting; but the species is certainly not the dichotoma, 
as Dr. Ecldon suspects, but probably a new species.” 
About the end of May, 1864, during the savage 
war between the Damaras and Namaqua Hottentots, 
1 was travelling with Mr. C. J. Andersson (who 
subsequently accepted the command of the former, 
and by the sacrifice of his property and nearly of 
his life, secured for them their independence), and 
passing by Hykamkop and Wilson’s Fountain, 
I again obtained sketches and specimens of the 
Welwitschia, and the Great Aloe, though I 
never subsequently found one that equalled the 
magnificent tree I had first met with. From 
these inferior specimens, growing abundantly among 
the x’ocks, I had no hesitation in cutting out a 
junk of the main stem ; and this, instead of showing 
concentric rings of wood like a timber tree, 
seemed merely an arrangement of reticulated fibres, 
partially filled with a soft moist pith, which, when 
dried up, left them like a loose and open net-work. 
I took the first opportunity of enclosing a few 
flowers in a letter to Sir William, who wrote to me 
that they were decidedly new, though the material 
was not sufficient to enable him to describe them. 
I kept a small branch with its tuft of leaves for 
many months, in the proverbially dry climate of 
Otjimbengue, and it seemed to possess in an extra- 
ordinary degree the power of retaining its moisture 
and vitality. I believe I might have brought my 
specimen to England in a sufficiently perfect state 
for examination, had I tied it loosely in a gunny- 
bag and kept it exposed to the air, instead of 
shutting it carefully in a box, which partially rotted 
it by confining the moisture. The Namaquas at 
Onanie’s Mouth call it the “ koker boom but, as 
that name is applied to almost any aloe of which 
they can make a quiver, and even to some of the 
small sterculias, this is no proof of its identity with 
the dichotoma. Messrs. Yan der Byl and Spence, 
who had been exploring and “ prospecting ” a new 
copper-mine in the direction of Bethany, in Nama- 
qua-land, and who joined the Good Hope in the 
rock-protected harbour of Angra Pequena, brought 
on board a few young shoots of apparently a similar 
aloe ; and these, placed in half a barrel of sand, 
were carefully preserved till they reached Cape 
Town, where, according to Dr. Burchell, a specimen 
of Aloe dichotoma existed in the Government 
garden previously to 1822. He gives, however, 
no figure nor description, and Lichtenstein, who 
travelled in 1803, speaks only by report of the 
“ koker boom,” as allied to Aloe perfoliata. 
The apparent similarity between the great Tree- 
Aloe and the Dragon-tree of Orotava can hardly 
escape notice, and especially because, in the common 
prints of the latter, which are copies of the sixth 
or eighth descent from the original, the true 
character of the long sword-shaped leaves is lost, 
and by clumsy drawing they have been shortened 
to the more triangular shape of those of the Aloe. 
So, in truth, the common prints of the Orotava 
Dragon-tree are much more like the Great Aloe 
than to the object they are supposed to represent. 
Whether the gigantic flowering Aloe I have de- 
lineated be, as the late Sir William Hooker con- 
sidered it, really new, is a question for scientific 
botanists. All I pretend to, is to represent faithfully 
what I have seen. The reader may easily compare 
my picture with the stereographs of the Diacoena in 
Professor Smyth’s “ Teneriffe,” as well as those of 
the great Tree- Aloe, which I trust will be in the 
forthcoming work of Mr. Chapman. I should be 
glad if Mr. Andersson, or some other of my friends 
travelling in Damara Land next May, would forward 
to Kew a branch, with its star of leaves wrapped 
loosely in a bit of gunny bag, and freely exposed to air 
during the passage, with a few of the flowers dried 
and some preserved in spirits ; and I should be glad 
to see some future number of Nature and Art 
enriched with a drawing and description of the 
dichotoma, by Mr. Charles Bell, who is now in 
England, and whose merits as an artist, in the most 
varied and extended sense of the word, are well 
known in the Cape Colony. 
THE PITCH LAKE. 
By Francis W. Rowseul. 
T HE Pitch Lake is one of the most extraordinaiy 
phenomena of the volcanic kind in the world. 
Tn size, if not also in its distinctiveness, it is with- 
out an equal, and the interest attaching to it, and 
to its surroundings, is proportionately great. Its 
geographical position is not a little remarkable. 
Situated in the island of Trinidad, which, without 
disrespect to the other islands, may be called the 
most beautiful of the British West Indies — indeed, 
it is known as the Indian Paradise— it is with its 
sombre complexion and its ever active volcanic 
springs, a sort of perpetual memento mori to the 
rest of the island. It is the ounce of bitter in the 
pound of sweet which has been allotted to Trinidad 
for its portion, and one comes upon it sliudderingly 
after seeing the other districts, and feels a sense of 
pain at discovering the canker which has found a 
home in so eminently fair a body. As the Pitch 
Lake differs in its special characteristics from any 
other object on the island, so does the character of 
the country in which it is situated differ from 
that of the rest of Trinidad. All along the north 
coast may be seen, in running down from Tobago, a 
bold mountain range, with few openings in it ; but 
these, when they occur, clothed with the richest 
tropical verdure. The mountains sheer down 
